And now for something a little different. This week, my sons and I will be reviewing Draw Star Wars The Clone Wars from Klutz publishing. The book is listed as being for kids ages 8 and up – and anyone who’s been paying attention knows my kids are younger than that. So, how does this book fare? Find out after the break.

Let’s start by talking about my 5-year-old son; he’s not too much of a draw-er. Oh sure, he does his school projects, but he doesn’t really sit down and pull out a coloring book to start drawing things. My 3-year-old is a little more into art – but he’s even younger than the 8 years this book is recommended for. So I really had no idea what I might be getting into with this review.

The book comes with everything you’d need, a mechanical pencil, marker, colored pencils and eraser – all in an attached case. I love it when you get a kit like this – it makes things much more straightforward, no searching for the right tools and it’s easy to keep things together for future use. It usually gets a good reaction from the kids too, and that was the case here as well.

And that’s not the only thing that got a good reaction. First the presentation in this book is really great. You’ve got a spread devoted to teaching you what the different drawing tools that were included are for. Then there’s a spread using Obi-Wan and Dooku to illustrate what you should and should not do in this book (can you guess who does not follow instructions well?).

And then the book gets right into it – providing you with attached tracing paper over top of pictures of the characters taken right out of the series. The book goes through stages, teaching tracing, how to create figures using basic shapes and then building upon them by adding in details – all the way up through coloring and adding in weapons.

So I was immediately taken by the book – but as I said in the beginning, I wasn’t sure how my kids would react. What I found was a book that inspired them both to draw more. My 5-year-old absolutely loved the book – and seems to really enjoy tracing (something I recall being quite fond of, probably tracing many a Star Wars book myself) – and he seems really good at it. I think using the basic shapes (circles, squares, triangles) really helped him get into it – he can easily trace those and see how it starts to form the shape of the characters. Plus because the book covers every major character from the series, it was easy for him to find the ones he likes and draw those. My younger son, while not able to trace, used it like a coloring book – allowing him to use the colored pencils to fill in his favorites as well.

This is the kind of book that easily makes for a great gift – and I think the level of detail it goes into means it would be very suitable for older kids as well. I’ve pointed out that my kids like it – but for kids or adults who are a little more serious about art, this book really does a great job of breaking down the complexity of drawing into something manageable. This is a fun book, one that gets the creative juices flowing, and one that I know my kids and I will continue to enjoy.

Review Copy courtesy of  Scholastic.